I had a net top thing from asus that had worse specs than that running fine a few years ago on AntiX. It was just used as a thin client mostly but did the job.

There’s an outage on aws and various other services which started at the same time. Have a look on downdetector

The main issue to solve is kids not having access to a computer at home, whether it be lack of incentive or money. Most people don’t even own a laptop anymore, so the only computer time they get is in a school setting.

Once the majority of schools have a system in place for most homework to be done on a PC, then there may be some creative ways to incentivise more PC adoption… again. It’s like we’ve gone back to the early 90s again where only kids who were really interested in computing knew anything about it.

I mean it depends on the hardware - you can get unlucky with that, sure. I’ve usually installed timeshift so it can be easily restored if necessary, but I’ve never had to restore any of the systems I setup besides my own - since Ubuntu 12.04 - around 12 years ago.

LTS is what I go with so no bleeding edge updates, and I’ve not setup anyone else’s system that has a dedicated GPU so many of the common issues don’t apply in my case.

However, I remember from 8.04 - 12.04 having a complete fking nightmare with WiFi adaptors. I get a twitchy eye just thinking about ndiswrapper…

Linux is bad at audio therefore it’s bad at everything? Interesting. Fair point about audio though, if you’re doing anything to do with that then stay clear of Linux. Raspberry pi audio is bad even by Linux standards, lol

I’ve set up Linux for various family members over the years, most recently for my Wife (lubuntu lts on an old laptop) and it’s always been smooth, unlike windows where I’m having to fix their problems every other week.

Key takeaway here is I had to set it up for them, none of them had a chance in hell at doing so themselves. For simple tasks, once setup correctly - it’s great. For an end user experience without initial help, the slightest thing will throw them during setup.

I’ve honestly had better luck with retro games on Linux than windows. Half the time lutris can auto install the game with minimal input, and patch the games etc - and even with abandonware titles I just pointed proton at them after installation and no issues.

If you’re on older integrated graphics however, I will admit it can be a lot more problematic.

It’s not just quality compared with UHD rips, it’s things like prime video refusing to play anything except 480p on a web browser… WTF are they thinking?

The issue is down to encoding performance, Nvidia performs a LOT better with comparable GPUs.

With that said, h265 is okay from what I’ve seen, but any devices you’re streaming to that use h264 and even a 1060 will stream better than a 6750xt etc

If you want to do any game streaming though (e.g. on Sunshine/moonlight), Nvidia is still miles ahead.

I’ve been running a 3070 for a few years on Pop OS, zero issues.

Most people don’t even know what Linux is… and a huge amount don’t even know what version of windows they use

Pop!_OS is a good option too imo. I game a lot on it with no issues, even something like cyberpunk 2077.

I use it because I’m more comfortable with working with it under the hood than Windows (day job experience). It’s also less of a PITA when it comes to bloat, updates (not just OS, general software too) and telemetry.

I did use Windows on my desktop until about a year ago to be fair, as I didn’t feel gaming was quite good enough - but after trying again it’s brilliant now. No reason to ever go back.

Plenty of people out there spend more money just on soap and diffusers, than you or I make in a year and a half, lol

It’s mostly this unless you go to a popular server on a linux channel. I did that recently from windows 3.11, and it was just like the good old days

Holy shit. Just found my profile that had stuff there like bio, pc specs and games/hours from when I was 14… I’m nearly 32 now. Wild …

I’m guessing the laptops are using Optimus and are maybe running big picture using the integrated graphics, hence being smoother on them. 1080ti I don’t know, maybe it’s just in issue with RTX cards or something. iirc it was to do with HW acceleration but not sure

He’s right about the new gamepad UI for steam though… it’s completely unusable in Linux from my experience (the old big picture UI worked fine)

Chrome OS is literally built on the Linux kernel and you’re saying it’s simpler lmao. It overtook because Google created their own entire class of laptop devices undercutting the price of most entry level options, preinstalled with ChromeOS.

More steps to get anything done is not correct, the entire reason I use Linux at work is because it takes less steps to get things done than Windows.

Installing Firefox on windows:

1. Open browser

2. Search for Firefox

3. Click result

4. Find and click download button

5. Click .exe

6. Click yes on security dialog

7. Click next a bunch of times (I’ll be fair and make this a single step)

8. Launch

On Linux (assuming it isn’t installed by default on your distro):

1. Open terminal

2. sudo apt install Firefox

3. type ‘y’

4. Launch

At least double the amount of steps if you don’t include launching the browser. You’re talking absolute shit saying it’s ‘simple fact’ when I could give many other examples that objectively prove your statement false.

Is it more difficult to use for the average user? Sure. Is it more difficult for everyone? No.